With its low self-esteem and high urban blight, Hartford is the ultimate underdog city. Sad City Hartford documents the joys, sorrows and eccentricities of New England's Rising Star.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Real Hartford vs. Sad City Hartford

Several readers have asked us if a rivalry exists between Real Hartford and Sad City Hartford? The question kind of makes sense. We are both independent blogs focused on the city of Hartford. Additionally, Hakaan does spend about a 1/3 of his monthly text messages griping about their site. But a rivalry? We are not so sure. Were Goofus and Gallant rivals? (We’ll leave it to you, dear readers, to decide who is who, but know that Jumper rarely combs his hair.)

To understand the Sad City Hartford / Real Hartford situation, we decided to conduct an extremely biased tail of the tape.

Origin
According to site founder Kerri Provost, Real Hartford’s origin as follows:This blog was born all slimy, kicking and screaming out of my discontent with how my home was being portrayed by the mainstream media and by some vocal, ill-mannered people in surrounding towns. It has been nurtured by those in the community who also understand that stereotypes are for the intellectually lazy.

According to Sad City Hartford’s charter:With its low self-esteem and high urban blight, Hartford is the ultimate underdog city. Sad City Hartford documents the joys, sorrows and eccentricities of New England's Rising Star.

EDGE: Sad City Hartford. Child birth is gross. Who wants a blog squeezed out of a discontented uterus? Plus, stereotypes are helpful. They take a lot of the work out of life, leaving more time for wholesome activities like like eating sandwiches and gambling on dog races at the OTB.

Writing Style
Writing style is important. The best way to measure writing style is with computers. For our analysis, we used the highly reliable and scientific I Write Like to break the two blogs down.

Based on a recent Kerri Provost post about school supplies, Real Hartford writes like H.P. Lovecraft. That makes sense. Hartford schools are a scary place.

Based on Hakaan’s recent dating post, Sad City Hartford writes like two under-employed thirty-somethings struggling with the fact that roughly half their lives are over and they still lead extremely mediocre existences.

EDGE: Real Hartford. Necronomicon is arguably one of the best pieces of writing from the twentieth century. Now if you will excuse me, we are going to take a brief moment to cry some more tears about failed dreams.

EDGE: Sad City Hartford. While we really were jealous of the idea, the execution of Real Hartford’s Guide to Bathrooms was weak. How can you do an entire story about Hartford’s bathrooms and not have a single glory hole story? That’s just dishonest journalism.

Freebies
Recently, both Real Hartford and Sad City Hartford were approached by a PR firm working for a local craft fair to offer free tickets to our readers. Real Hartford ran a little trivia contest and gave away some tickets. Sad City Hartford went crazy, publicly accused the PR firm of being an insane boiler room operation based in China and then proceeded to ridicule the crafts offered at the fair.

EDGE: Real Hartford. Stay classy, Sad City.

Portrayal of Hartford
Real Hartford tries to find the beauty in our community. Sad City Hartford makes videos that bum people out.

EDGE: Sad City Hartford. We still assert that the following video is an awesome snapshot of some seriously underrepresented and awesome parts of the city.

Final Conclusion
We win! Sad City Hartford is the best blog about Hartford ever today! Yay. We are ready to take on all other comers. Ubinas...McEnroe...The CuT...Party Starters...Mira Hartford...we’ll take you all on, fools. We want the crown!